/sci/ - Science & Math

>>10714271
if we travel fast enough almost no time will pass. You could visit a lot of things within your lifetime.

>>10714271

Solar sails :D

>>10714271
>what is special relativity
if you go at 99.9999999% speed of c, then you can get to the center of the galaxy in 1 year. Just use antimatter bro

>>10714271
If we discover an efficient way of generating or harvesting antimatter, then we will be able to travel everywhere. If not, then the only hope we have to colonize the galaxy is through self replicating spacecrafts. In such scenario, the entire galaxy could be potentially colonized in only 100k years.

It's probably possible just not in a way we think it is and it will take several civilizational resets to reach the solution.

>>10714271
Tiny laser sail can possibly do it. All we need to do is invest in nanotechnology and material science. Strong/light/heat resistant + few gigawatts of lasers can shoot that shit to 10-20-30% of speed of light, making the journey to the nearest star system into few decades.

Then with advances in nanotechnology, we can carry tiny sperm samples, programmable self-replicating nanobots and antennas to rebuild human civilizations.

>>10714271
The average distance between stars in the milky way is ~5ly.
You could start traveling the stars NOW if you had a blank cheque politically and economically.
Send a ship with an orion drive or even von neumann probes (assuming you can build one) ahead of you to do the path finding. Once you're at the terminus construct a big ass MASER around the star, now you've got an interstellar highway to ferry things on that won't need to carry as much fuel.

>>10714271
>Are we destined to float in space forever with no one but ourselves?
>trillions of human and other sentient beings but you’d still feel lonely
have sex

>>10714305
wait explain yourself

>>10714418
>Tfw you can just go chill with a wild african boar and some microorganisms whenever you feel lonely
Wtf i love earth now!

>>10714424
you should

>>10714422
when you travel at relativistic speeds the distances contract. Travelling 1 year from your perspective at 99% the speed of light would allow you to cover 7 light years.

At 99.9% the speed of light you can cover 22.5 light years in 1 year from your perspective.

The true limitation is how much you can accelerate, because that's what can kill you and that's what will limit how much time you spend travelling.

>>10714482
>Tfw i have to choose between being a space pirate and all my loved ones dying off on earth time before me or being a normie earthling
Its not fair

>>10714271
>he doesnt know

wormholing is possible and you do it many times very quickly to travel long distances as the energy consumption depends on how far you jump

>>10714596
how

>>10714271
I hope so. The universe is too big, it's spooky. Solar system is much more comfy. Let's just stay here okay

>>10714424
>wild african boar
Freudian slip maybe?

>>10714422
A photon does not feel the passage of time.
Wether you're shining a light against a wall in your house, or across the depths of space "t" becomes zero.
Which is why superluminal travel is treated as a meme, you could arrive at the destination BEFORE you left, fucking up causality.

Gravity is time. Or rather the difference between the rate of time in different spots in space. When you're moving at the speed of light, the time stops for you / your mass becomes infinite. so moving at the speed of light, gets you anywhere in no time, from your perspective.

>>10714326
>>10714339
explain antimatter pls

What if the reason we haven't encountered any extraterrestrial beings yet is because there isn't any efficient way to travel through space

>>10714271
>just a meme
Lrn2meme fgt pls

>>10714326
Matter+Anti-Matter annihilation drives have a upper speed limit of around 80% of the speed of light.

You'd have to use focused laser propulsion shot from a sort of "highway" system to be able to reach 99.99999% the speed of light. Problem is this will only be reached on second trips when we already built this highway.

Just for your information we can go at 10% the speed of light using fission propulsion. 30% using nuclear fusion propulsion and 80% using antimatter+matter annihilation as internal drives.

External propulsion such as lasers being shot at your spaceship will be the long-term prefered travel method.

it will be possible with three scenarios:
A) We develop torchships
B) We develop self-sustaining generation ships.
C) We develop hypersleep.

No way is A happening. C probably won't happen but who knows, that's a biology question and biology is weird. B is the most likely I think.

>>10714271
Why do you see long timescales and think “oh that’s impossible”?

>>10716117
Then we'll have to do it inefficiently.

>>10717952
How long would it take to accelerate to 80% C without liquefying the passengers?

>>10714271
Of course it's just a meme. One way or another, sooner or later, we will all perish on this insular rock. The only hope of getting off it is actually building some kind of portal to an alternate universe that might be more hospitable than our own
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/06/11/planets-habitable-zone-alien-life-much-rarer-than-thought/1422413001/

>>10714271
mind uploading will be the enabling technology

>>10714271

No, it's EZPZ. You just send brain uploads, not biological humans. The computer they live in goes into sleep mode at the outset of the journey then resumes processing upon arrival at the destination and begins building robotic bodies out of in situ materials for the "crew" to be downloaded into. From their perspective, the trip was instantaneous.

>>10714729
>A photon does not feel the passage of time.

>>10717957
And why precisely are torch ships impossible, Mr. Retard with no knowledge whatsoever

>>10714576
That's not even a choice, anon. I love my wife, but if space piracy is on the table, I will make love to her one last time before I set off to become the most infamous bandit the human race would have ever known.

>>10719461
i didnt say they were impossible, i said they weren't going to happen

>>10719484
Based but
>not getting a sex Android and/or uploading her consciousness to it

>>10714271
>Is interstellar space travel just a meme?
Right now it is, yes. I've been slowly shifting possible futures for a couple years now, and when future historians converge on my posts they'll infer a false dichotomy between generation ships and breakaway civilizations.

Short of superluminal travel, generation ships are just another form of breakaway civilization humanity creates to sate its (otherwise) collapsing ego. Only after the first ship leaves will posts like this really start to wake humanity up.

>>10720177
Yeah I think that even if you solve the technical issues of space travel, you are left with some existential and biological truths that makes it very depressing and not at all desirable to most people. On long enough time scales of human civilization if this ever becomes reality, the reality is that you will have a starting point of civilization on Earth spreading outwards colonizing space and then becoming entirely different beings as time goes and very sporadic contact even if all exploration was mapped and understood by everyone. I don't think these timescales are made for humans to experience or understand so if this kind of civilization ever occurs it will most likely be immortal creatures who has a psychological perception of time vastly different than ours.

>>10714610
That's like saying why travel when you can just sit in your garden. Solar system is a meme anyway. All those gas giants are just useless bundles of clouds. Trying to get excited about them is like trying to get excited about your attic.

>>10720227
>>10720177
It's not that bad. Once we solve aging it won't be such a big deal to take a decade going to another star. We're on the very of becoming time lords a lot sooner than anyone expects, only instead of sporadically interesting adventures in time and space we'll instead be travelling very slowly from star to star.

>>10714610
Gay. Why squat here when you have better places to be?

>>10717957


A generation ship with living active people would probably be too hard to maintain. Groups of people develop factions and if they are stuck together for a generations, an on-ship war would be inevitable.

But there is a fourth option, similar to this:
>>10718147

If you can copy a human brain, and store the information in some durable way, you can have a robot ship terraform the destination planet, and then recreate humans to live there. The terraforming could take as long, or longer than the interstellar journey. But you would eventually have humans living on another planet, thus insuring humanity's survival.

>>10721060
Cryoships are the solution. Imagine people emerging out of the space from a few decades or a century past. It would keep the human stew turning over nicely by constantly bringing old cultures and historical periods up again for a second go around. It would be like a ship full of 19th century people turning up every so often.